PDF Converter - Feb/Mar '04

PDF Converter

ScanSoft Inc., the maker of OmniPage and PaperPort, recently released PDF Converter, designed to convert Portable Document Format files to Microsoft Word documents. This inexpensive program ($49.99) has tremendous potential, but as with most 1.0 releases, also a large number of serious problems.

Once installed, the program allows you to convert standard, non-encrypted PDF files into Word documents using Word, Outlook (for attachments), Internet Explorer (for PDF files on the Web) and Windows Explorer, which adds a right-click conversion option called “Open PDF in Word.”

When opening a PDF file using Word, the document opens with the PDF conversion option highlighted. In principle, this could be an extremely slick and useful tool.

Some restrictions are fairly self-evident and logical: The program will not convert encrypted files or files in which the right to print or edit has been restricted. It can’t be used to subvert restrictions placed on the file by the person who created it. In addition, it will not convert files that are image-only (no text layer). These files will have to be run through an optical character recognition engine such as ScanSoft’s OmniPage, Abbyy’s FineReader, TextBridge or other similar programs. If you have OmniPage, the program will offer to use it; otherwise you are on your own.

To test the program, I ran it through several dozen PDF files of various sorts from a variety of different sources, such as software publicity brochures and legal documents (using Corel WordPerfect’s built-in PDF writer). I used Adobe’s PDF Maker to convert documents from Word to PDF and then back to Word again, and created test documents containing specific features such as paragraph numbering, footnotes, indented paragraphs, footers and so on.

Perhaps the best way to describe the program’s more serious limitations is to state the cases in which the conversions worked fairly well, but were still somewhat limited.

In my testing, I noted particular problems with the following:

Footnotes are converted to straight text.
Footers might be converted to text boxes at the bottom of each page, but are not converted to footers.
Paragraph numbering converts to straight text (this is fairly standard in any document conversion including from WordPerfect to Word or vice versa), but if the paragraphs are indented, the spacing might not be right.
Documents that are full-justified (the right margins line up in a straight line and are not ragged) have extra spaces randomly inserted between words to try to match full justification.
Tables using visible grid lines tend to convert correctly, but the conversion might be somewhat haphazard in a table with no visible lines.
Any kind of graphic lines (for example, a line across the page between the heading of a memo and the text, which is fairly common) are simply dropped.
Graphics boxes are not likely to convert correctly and might be wildly off, and getting your letterhead to print correctly using a PDF file might be an important reason for creating the PDF file in the first place.
Drop caps don’t convert well.
The program seems to put a section break at the end of every PDF page. This will wreak havoc with any attempt to edit the document unless you realize the section breaks are there.
Fonts might not convert to the correct point size.

Finally, the program warns you about “non-standard encoding,” but converts it anyway. And again, if you have OmniPage, PDF Converter will offer to use it to convert the “non-standard encoding.” I was unable to get confirmation from ScanSoft whether “non-standard encoding” refers specifically to PDF files created using third-party tools such as PDFfactory, PDF995 or the Word-Perfect PDF converter.

In one case, after converting a four-page memo with no special formatting and in Courier font to PDF from Word and converting it back again, the font size was incorrect, the pagination was off, and there was an inexplicable region of garbage in the middle of the reconverted text.

With all these caveats, one might well ask: “Is it worth even bothering with?” The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is “yes.” In fact, most documents law firms are going to want to convert will be briefs, complaints and documents with very little advanced formatting.

PDF Converter does a decent job overall. There will be clean up, but it’s far superior to cutting and pasting from a PDF file into an unformatted Word document. It’s certainly a lot easier and more accurate than scanning a printed version and cleaning it up, but it’s also far from providing a “magic button” solution.

ScanSoft Inc.
(800) 443-7077

www.scansoft.com/
pdfconverter

Price: $49.99

Windows 98SE/2000/ME/NT 4.0; Word 97/2000/XP/2003

Reviewed by John Heckman, principal of Heckman Consulting (www.heckmanco.com) and 20 year veteran in assisting law firms with technology issues. He can be reached at heckman@
heckmanco.com or (860) 395-0881.

Feb/Mar '04 Issue

PROS
Inexpensive and extremely simple to use. Quick conversion without going through a scanning program.

CONS
Except for documents with very simple formatting, it has some significant clean up issues.

VERDICT
For basic conversion without having to print a PDF file, scan it into a word processor and do clean up there, this can be a good half-way house. It’s worth getting a couple of copies.